From St John’s Downshire Hill, in Hampstead; a chamber-sized Alessandro Scarlatti's Stabat Mater and highly sensitive interpretation by The Bach Players. 

 

The Bach Players play on original instruments and with forces that are as small as possible (mostly single strings and single voices).  

 

Mezzo-soprano: Sally Bruce-Payne

 

 

Sent from my iPhone

At the Royal Festival Hall

Down the Burning Ropes

 

When the hills let go

Slowly fade into the water like some ancient lover

On a ship filled with ghosts

It's something to behold

 

When the paper thin girls

With twisting little braids in their hair,

They take off their coats and throw

Pebbles and stones from the side of the boat,

Crying out

The stones they float, the stones they float

Oh my God, the stones they float, the stones they float

 

Down the burning ropes

Past the places where the steal beams meet concrete skies

You make your bed under the moonlight

I think it's time we said goodbye

 

Cause nothing moves in the warm air

And words that once would cut like a knife,

They just hang in the cloud and you're

Pushed by the lord,

But you're pulled by the crowds and

You're overboard, you're overboard

Oh my God, she's overboard

 

My love she's overboard

She's overboard

My love she's over board

 

Not a shell unbroken

In the valley where my heartache and the timbers lay

It's not the time to be hanging around here

You know what some might say

 

That people get too reckless

That even with the simplest of crimes

They leave blood behind,

As I clean the knife for the very last time

I think she knows, I think she knows

Oh my God, I think she knows

 

I think she knows

 

Sent from my iPhone 

Aarghh. Sometimes it's annoying enough that Google tailors my search results based on my 'user behaviour'. And since my user behaviour scores exceptionally high in searching for jQuery codes and CSS snippets, I get lots of CSS results when looking for a plumber. Helpful, not really.

There is a way around all that.. opening an incognito window in Chrome.. and searching in Google 'all afresh'. But who really goes to such lengths when all we want to do is Google all day long on phones, ipads and basically any working machine picking up a decent network. I just wish there was a simple option within Google to turn this function off.

I registered with StumbleUpon the other day to make a frightening discovery. Only after filling in a basic profile (gender, age & location), I was asked to select a few interests from a list. But... seems this list has been generated based on my very basic profile submissions (of my gender, age & location). I started looking for web design.. computers.. anything technical really would do. To my horror there are no such options on my list. Instead I only get served a list of interests which sound dreadfully 'female'... as in female three decades ago…

So I decided to do a little test, and sign out, to then register again as a male.

Here we go; I do get Action Movies, but instead of Alternative Energy (for guys), I (as a female) get Alternative Health. Guys get Ancient History whereas I get Antiques. Hmm, I always loved reading about the Vikings but will have to go looking for some naff cupboard instead.. Guys get 'Babes' and 'Beer'!! I get Beauty instead :(

It doesn't end here.. I get the choice of 'Cats' instead of the guy's option of 'Business', I get 'Dogs' instead of 'Computers', I get 'Facebook' instead of 'Electronic Devices'.. I get 'Home Improvement' instead of 'Humor', I get 'Interior Design' instead of 'Internet Tools'. And I'm given 'Married Life' instead of 'Multimedia' :((

Since I also got 'Spirituality' instead of 'Sports', and 'Weight Loss' instead of 'Video Games'... I will pray - while starving to death - that StumbleUpon will change its ridiculous profile generated gender biased lists ASAP.

Come on StumbleUpon, this is 2012!!

Chicks options:

Blokes options:

Last week I was lucky enough to land just before a snowstorm walloped Amsterdam with the first heavy snow this winter. Sub-zero temperatures gripped the Netherlands and the city's canals froze over.

As skaters started exploring Amsterdam's canals on ice, the nation was gripped with ice fever as the Dutch hopes grew that a historic ice skating race would take place. This race takes skaters through 11 Dutch cities in a 200-km (124 mile) marathon along the frozen canals in the Dutch province of Friesland. Wrapped up against the biting cold, and fortified along the way by hot chocolate and pea soup, they skate all day across ice that's been sculpted into lumps and ridges by the wind and in parts ironed smooth by man.

If held this month, it would be the first time since 1997. While much of Europe rued the bitter cold snap, the Dutch religiously followed weather reports, ice updates and bulletins from the organisation that decides whether conditions are right for the marathon race. Talk all week has centred on whether it was cold enough for the canal water to freeze evenly, whether the snow blanket was too thick, hampering ice formation, and whether the ice would reach the required 15 cm (6 inches) of thickness needed along the entire course.

But, as thaw is expected to set in this Sunday and the ice is still not thick enough, race organisers deferred a decision last night. "At this moment we cannot organise the race, as the ice is not thick enough on some parts of the route," Wiebe Wieling, president of the organising committee, told a press conference.

The Dutch keep hoping that the cold snap will resume next week. Back in London - where temperatures are well above zero - this magical land of ice seems a long way away.

I wrote about paste-ups a while ago; a cheeky alternative to graffiti. On one of my trips over to Amsterdam I noticed their arrival to the Dutch capital.

Taking on the slightly mysterious shape of an owl. I'm not sure if the picture shows; the owl itself is cut out in paper and pasted onto the wall.

Note the QR code pasted on top!

Allesley, Brighton, Eindhoven, London, Hampstead Heath, Pedras d'el Rei, Hatton Locks

While in Hong Kong - combining fun & work -  it's an interesting journey to get a proper look at Asian web design. Due to Hong Kong's heavy focus on finance and business, there seems to be a noticable lull in creative web design. Most Chinese websites still seem incredibly static.

But.. while heavy snow and subzero temperatures sweep across Europe, closing major airports in Britain, weather is pretty near perfect here. Like night and day.

Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong, by day & night.

And speaking of design in a more general sense; the structural expressionism adopted in the design of this building resembles growing bamboo shoots, symbolising livelihood and prosperity. While its distinctive look makes it one of Hong Kong's most identifiable landmarks today, it was the source of some controversy at one time, as the bank is the only major building in Hong Kong to have bypassed the convention of consulting with feng shui masters on matters of design prior to construction.

Makes me wonder what feng shui masters may be able to add to web design..

A while back I posted some pictures of these manga style paste-ups popping up on Brick Lane. Very cute and appealing, I called them Cheeky Paste-Ups. One of them had a name running vertically alongside: Bortusk Leer.

 

I happened to be in New York a couple of weeks ago and visited a friend who lives in Brooklyn. Bortusk Leer is travelling too. His cheeky paste-ups suddenly appeared when I turned a corner in some non-descript street in Williamsburg. It oozed of something strangely familiar. The kind of feeling you'd get on spotting your grandma's wallpaper in a B&B in some remote place.

 

Today I found out his work is currently for sale at the Brick Lane Gallery in London. The artists's beautiful yet somewhat alienating name of Bortusk Leer- and a fake one of course - is really used by the artist to sell his work. Most of it is the very same little naive figures spray painted directly onto crappy newspapers although it seems he is also venturing into 3D collages on real canvas. Not hanging up in the gallery itself but in the adjacent tiny back-office space. I'm not convinced yet whether that will work for him. But, as one of the many street artist winding their way into galleries, I'm glad to find his little monsters there too.

It's not often a muse wanders by.

While Ruth and I were sipping on a cappacino in Primrose Hill last week, Mrs Beechey strolled by with her shopping. After 52 years of manning the fort at Welsh’s hardware store in Regent’s Park Road, June Beechey decided it was time to retire. Since she's something of a beloved institution in PH, a number of people asked for her photo outside the shop - and suddenly a stencilled life-size image of a lady brandishing a light bulb and teapot has popped up all over North London... from Primrose Hill to Kentish Town and Archway.

Banksy says it's not his.

She must have had a secret admirer.

The accompanying anti-war slogan  is an issue close to her heart. She said: “Make tea not war is something I’d agree with – although I prefer a nice cup of coffee.”

June Beechey with her portrait spray-painted on the wall to the right